


all is quiet

by sleeperservice



Series: Help! I’m a Witch Now, In Love With My Best Friend [1]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Portal Fantasy, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 23:44:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17395976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleeperservice/pseuds/sleeperservice
Summary: Mikko was on his way home. After so many years of listening for him on late nights like this where he was called to the village for one emergency or another, Mikko’s step was unmistakable to Alex’s ears.





	all is quiet

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on [Dreamwidth](https://lilymaid.dreamwidth.org/10814.html).

The night was still to ordinary human senses. Alex could still hear everything if he listened hard. Snow falling off branches onto the ground; the movement of hares on the snowpack; the distant sounds of human feet on the trail to the cottage. Mikko was on his way home. After so many years of listening for him on late nights like this where he was called to the village for one emergency or another, Mikko’s step was unmistakable to Alex’s ears.

Alex would always stay up to wait for Mikko. There was no telling what would have happened during one of his calls. The sick taking a turn for the worse; a birth gone wrong for mother or baby or both; a prophetic vision that Mikko’s mind just couldn’t shake off. It all had happened before, and would happen again, and Alex would always be there at the end of the journey to welcome him home and give him comfort.

The light of the full moon was bright in the cloudless sky. Mikko always carried his lantern with him, but must have left it unlit as Alex could not see its light, faint as it would have been, through the trees. He seemed a long time coming. Alex could hear his steps becoming louder and louder as he came closer to the cottage.

When Mikko finally arrived, Alex had already opened the door for him. He let Mikko hang up the unlit lantern and drop his pack next to the door before he gathered him into his arms.

“Your steps were slow and weary,” Alex said. “How did this one go?”

Mikko laughed. “An anxious first-time mother sending a false alarm against the wishes of her female relatives. It is the early contractions; you know those, baby is coming soon but not quite yet. I only hope she does not summon me too late when it really starts to happen.” He snuggled closer into Alex’s embrace. “But it was mentally tiring trying to calm her down. I was offered a place to sleep but in the guest room, squeezed between her aunts, was not an offer I felt like accepting when I had your warm body in our own bed waiting at home. And it is so cold out there, too.”

Alex knew he should have looked at Mikko’s face first before he panicked. “It’s cold in our bed now, without you in there.”

“Let me get all these layers off and then we can go to bed together. You are still dressed for the day, too. And once again you have forgotten that I, unlike you, cannot see in the dark.” Mikko kissed Alex but on the ear instead of the mouth. “Like now, I do that because I cannot see you properly.”

Alex let go of Mikko and lit a candle. “Now my ear’s all wet.”

Mikko hung his cloaks—all of them—next to the door. “It’s only what you deserve for that.”

“Don’t punish me any further! I don’t need any more of your spit drifting into my eardrums.”

“What, do you think I would try it in your other ear?” Mikko snorted. “I can see your mouth now, or at least where it’s lurking behind your beard, and I’d much rather kiss that now that I can see it.”

Alex winked at him. “Still jealous because you can’t grow one anymore?”

“No, just cold on the face when I’m outside.” Mikko finally kissed Alex in the correct spot.

Alex was very aware that he was probably as tired as Mikko was. His worrying left him as sleepless as Mikko’s work left him. “I did get our bedclothes out while I was waiting for you.”

“You never forget that, though, unless something else has distracted you. And for that I am always thankful.” Mikko had started to remove his clothing as he walked into their bedroom. He was a very efficient dresser.

Alex had to look quickly to see Mikko mostly unclothed, before he put his nightshirt on. He didn’t have the athlete body anymore, not that he had much of one before they came here; what he had was the body of a forty-five-year old village witch and healer who did a lot of walking and knew exactly where his next meal was coming from. Nice strong legs that would be wrapping around Alex’s that night in bed, and a little soft, round belly that felt so nice and warm squished into him when they cuddled. It was a body made for sharing a bed on a long winter’s night. So was his, for that matter. They suited each other.

“I caught you looking. I’d like to look at you too but I’d need another candle.” Mikko wasn’t good at faking annoyance. His expression wouldn’t give it away but the tone of his voice always did.

“That can wait until the light of day,” Alex said. “I watch you now, and you watch me in the morning. Wasn’t that the deal?”

Mikko had taken his hair out of its braid and was quickly brushing it out. “We made no deal. It just worked out that way. Why are you so ridiculously slow to move during the winter? Get undressed.”

Alex had started but he kept getting distracted by other thoughts. “The trees are dormant and so many of the animals are hibernating or slowed down. It seems to still go for me, too. Nothing’s changed much.”

“At the same time that everything has changed, so much.” Mikko had already climbed under the many covers and blown out the candle.

“Yes.” Alex finished dressing and got in bed. He waited for Mikko to move closer to him, which he did almost instantly. They lay there silently for a few moments. Neither of them could sleep.

Alex whispered, breaking the silence. “It’s ten years to the day since we were stuck here, you know.”

“I know,” Mikko whispered in reply. “I count the days as well as you do.”

“Do you wonder what happened to everyone else, sometimes?”

“Besides Granny, you mean? Yes. We were bound here, more or less—you more, me less—but I wish I knew what drove everyone else off. If it was forced, or if something like what happened to Granny happened to them and we just never figured it out, or if they left us here on their own free will.” Mikko sighed.

“He should be here tomorrow. Granny, that is.”

“It’s harder and harder to get him to come. Or to stay. Every month, he slips further and further away. Someday, I will break it, and he will return to us for good.”

“I know, Mikko. You’ll find the right book or make the right spell and make everything right again.”

“Not everything, I don’t think.”

Alex had to gather courage to ask the next question. “If we could go back home, right now, would you?”

Mikko breathed deeply. “No. First off, Granny...we would be leaving him here, and that would be a cruelty I could not make happen. Also, I don’t have an apprentice trained yet. I would leave this village with no midwife and no healer for humans. They may not need my fortune telling, or my other spells, but they need the rest. And, you know, I will be waiting another twenty-five years for the next witch. She will be born here. I need to wait. And...if we go back, would I lose you too? I could not. I would not. And so I would remain here, and I would hope you would stay with me too.”

“I would. I would never leave you here alone. I love you. I don’t think I would ever want to live without you.”

“I wanted to hear that from you, but I didn’t need to.” The love Mikko had for Alex was evident in his voice. “You prove that to me every day. I see it every day on my hand when I look at the ring you carved for me. You love me again and again and again every night you go without sleep to make sure I am safe when I return home. And we will remain together, as long as this place needs to be protected and we are the ones given the power to do it.”

Their love, forced together by things they could never understand, kept together by themselves, keeping this little pocket of world safe. Ten years now, and intended to last for decades more. It was a charge that Alex had wished he had been allowed a choice to accept, but he would have never rejected Mikko’s genuine affection and friendship. It had been there before they came, and it turned into something more as they coped together with what this world had turned them into. It would never dissolve.

He looked at Mikko, finally collapsed into sleep after his weary day, and felt a surge of warmness. Alex closed his eyes and listened for the background sounds that would help him get to sleep. Snow cracking and shifting; the sound of the straw tick under them rustling as they moved slightly; Mikko’s calm heartbeat and breaths. He drifted into lovely, cozy dreams.


End file.
